Hello I am Spandan Mukherjee and I will be presenting about the influences on Islam.

Islam main influence was Greece due to Alexander the Great and his conquests, but some ideas and beliefs came from the Indian subcontinent.

After the Roman Empire fell and turned into the Byzantine empire, many of the Ancient Greek philosophical works were lost or destroyed. Islamic scholars preserved some of these works and added to them.

Why would they go searching for these ideas?The Islamic people saved these works because their prophet Muhammad taught that knowledge and learning was valuable. So Muslim rulers led searches for Ancient Greek and some Indian philosophical works.

After the rulers found the philosophical works they sent them to be translated from their native language to Arabic. After this, Arabic philosophers studied the texts, verified their claims through experimentation, systematically organized them and then added or commented their own observations.

Islamic scholars made headway in many different fields. Firstly, math, which lead to astronomy and cartography. Also, physics and chemistry. Finally, biology and medicine. We’ll go through these one by one.

Al-Khwarizmi wrote 2 very important books. In one he explained how to use the Indian concept of the 10 digit number system and in the other he explained algebra. From Greece came geometry and trigonometry. Muslim scholars combined the 3 ideas and applied more Algebra into the solution of geometric problems. Which allowed them to refine Trig to use the simpler functions of sin, cos, and tan. This combined with the astronomical observations of their own, plus Greek and Indian astronomers, allowed them to effectively measure the distance between earthly places or make maps.

The biggest observation in physics consisted of light. Greeks believe that vision came from your eyes. The Muslims said they were wrong and that vision came from reflected rays of light entering the eyes. This man, Ibn al-Haytham, also introduced the concepts of reflections and refraction.

Islam combined the herbal knowledge of the Greeks and Indians to effectively use many different plants in medicine. The anatomy and systematic study of the human body was another Greek concept that they helped perfect. Mainly the anatomy of the eyes and pulmonary blood circulation. The use of anesthesia was developed during this time and the transmission of diseases was understood on a more scientific level. They also enhanced the administration of medical treatment. Hospitals were maintained by the government and treatment was free. They started keeping patient records.

The Islamic golden age contributed majorly to the advancement of science. Much of it was building on or refining the concepts invented by Greek and Indian philosophers. Their influences propelled Islam to become a major world power at that time and now.